A Moment in the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

glances and smiles like the most precious of gifts. Then the ilustrados with their European suits and gold watches endlessly consulted to show them off and the españoles with their air of disdain and condescension—yes, they’d rather be in Madrid but duty entails sacrifice and this sort of event, though unavoidably second-rate here in the Colony, is such a good influence on the indios— the men all lingering in front of the ornate, circular temple of culture until the orchestra is well into the overtura. Diosdado searches over their heads for Scipio, who said to meet him here. But Scipio never makes an entrance—he just appears.
    “A well-placed infernal device,” says Hilario Ibañez, eyeing a phalanx of Spaniards talking rather more loudly than the orchestra within, “would do the nation a great deal of good.” Hilario is a poet and given to morbid flights of imagination.
    Diosdado shakes his head. “And destroy the best along with the worst?”
    He is careful to always seem the conciliator in public, the gradualist in questions of politics. A debater who can argue either side of a question, moderate in opinion and passion. It is a role he is beginning to despise.
    Kokoy flicks the butt of his cigarette to the ground, sighs wearily. “We’re needed inside, gentlemen.”
    They move, careful to maintain an air of indifference, to the back of the balcony where the smoke from the oil lamps in the chandeliers collects, with the scattered rainbow of young beauties below them and time for a quick flurry of tsismis concerning the romantic lives of the performers, the Italians (or the French, for that matter) eugenically destined for scandal, with the conduttore turning to count empty seats and the Manila fire department, opera lovers all, standing at the top of the main aisle, doors flung open behind them with the hose in hand and ready for service. The ushers shoo the little street girls selling roses and gardenias out of the building and the din of Filipino society in full flower begins to abate and then there is applause as the curtain is drawn and the first notes cut the air. Diosdado smiles to himself, thinking of how he loves it all, loves it as only a boy raised on cockfights and the occasional scabrous traveling puppet show can, a haciendero ’s son from the wild coast of Zambales who spent his first year in the great city pretending he had seen it all, that he was not impressed, that he, provincial imposter, belonged there. And usually at this point, lights dimmed to hide him from his cohorts, he would let his guard down and allow the singers to carry him to Paris or Thessaly or ancient Egypt.
    Tonight it is the Tell , in a mercifully abridged version, the audience silenced immediately by the stirring overture, lederhosen and dirndls barely able to disguise the uncomfortable parallels with the present situation—a despotic government, an insurrection in the bundoks , blood feuds complicating the political situation, love and honor—
    But tonight the music is only background to his own drama.
    “They want you,” said Scipio.
    This in the Jesuit library, with the late-day sun slanting through the windows and the other colegios absorbed, unsuspecting, in their texts. Diosdado felt the building move a little, as it did during the medium-sized tremors common within the Intramuros.
    “Why now?”
    Scipio smiled. “Because you’re the best liar in Manila.”
    He had hoped they would need his talents as a linguist. Zambal, Tagalog, Spanish, Latin, English from his year in Hongkong, even a bit of Cantonese, all these valuable as the revolt proceeded through its stages. But lying—
    “They want me to be a spy?”
    “For now. We each serve in our own way.”
    Diosdado had guessed for some time that his best friend was a member of the Katipunan, but Scipio would never admit it. “ I am a patriot ,” he would say, lifting an eyebrow, whenever Diosdado asked to be sponsored into the Brotherhood, “ but not a